Two fighter jets forced a small plane to land after the pilot flew too close to President Bush’s ranch in central Texas while he was spending the weekend there.The Secret Service on Saturday confirmed that the pilot violated restricted air space over the ranch on Friday night, several hours after the president arrived, and was forced to land at nearby Waco Regional Airport.... http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Survivors of the Red Sea ferry disaster said on Saturday the Egyptian captain had fled his burning ship by lifeboat and abandoned them to their fate, as hopes faded of finding some 800 missing people.Some passengers, plucked alive from the sea or from boats after the ferry caught fire and sank early on Friday, said crew members had told them not to worry about the blaze below deck and even ordered them to take off lifejackets.An official at el-Salam Maritime Transport Company, which owned the Al Salam 98, said the captain, named as Sayyed Omar, was still unaccounted for. The company will issue a written statement on the disaster later on Saturday, he added.Rescue workers have recovered 195 bodies from the Red Sea and saved 400 people, but about 800 more, most of them Egyptian workers returning from Saudi Arabia, are missing....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11157659/from/RSS/

An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, according to government documents. George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations. "Yogi Berra was right: It's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the National Security Archive, a nongovernment research group at George Washington University. "It's the same debate." ...http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/04/politics/main1281380.shtml?CMP=OTC-RSSFeed&source=RSS&attr=U.S._1281380

The Bush administration has said it is planning to spend $120bn on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars this year, bringing their total cost so far to $440bn.The spending request, which will soon be presented to Congress, marks a 20% increase over last year, despite plans to draw down US troop levels in both war zones in the coming months. The administration also plans to ask for a downpayment of $50bn on war costs next year. The requests are expected to pass easily. The spending on the Iraq conflict alone is now approaching the cost of the Korean war, about $330bn in today's dollars. Meanwhile the cost of the overall "war on terror" - relabelled The Long War in the Pentagon - is already close to half a trillion dollars, and will soon equal that of the 13-year Vietnam war."There is some reason to be surprised that it's this much," said Steven Kosiak, a military spending analyst at the Centre for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. "The Congressional Budget Office had...http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1702037,00.html

House Republicans will have to do some "soul-searching" in the wake of Thursday's leadership election, as party leaders acknowledged publicly they face difficult re-election battles. "We've had a tough year and the members on the Republican side are looking at their own re-elections and the environment right now is not real good," said new House Majority Leader John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. In the race to become majority leader, Mr. Boehner's surprise victory over Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri has shaken the GOP and left other party leaders saying the entire House Republican Conference must re-evaluate its position next week during the annual retreat in Maryland. "I think we're just going to do more soul-searching," conference chairwoman Deborah Pryce, the Ohio Republican in charge of organizing next week's retreat, said. "This election was very informative for all of us." Mr. Boehner topped Mr. Blunt and Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona,...http://www.washtimes.com/national/20060203-111444-6054r.htm

A stampede outside a sports stadium in the Philippines capital, Manila, has left at least 66 dead. Tens of thousands of people had come to the stadium for the first anniversary recording of a popular TV gameshow. Many had camped all week for tickets. An official said it was not yet known how many people had been injured, and details of casualties were still coming in from local hospitals. The stampede was reportedly sparked by rumours of a bomb hidden in the crowd. ...http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4680040.stm